THE SERVANT OF THE PRIEST Who was the young man who, if this interpretation be the true one, anticipated the women and shared with them the earliest experiences of that memorable morning? We shall probably never know, for if St. Mark withheld his name it must have been for very good and sufficient reasons. But there is one thought in that connection which I venture to think will bear profound and repeated study. If the reader will take the last eight verses of St. Marks Gospel (chapter 16, verses 1 to 8) and will study them carefully, remembering that they represent probably the earliest written account of these events, he will, I think, be pulled up very sharply by one fact-the absence of any hint or suggestion as to how the stone itself came to be moved. An impenetrable curtain descends abruptly at the conclusion if the burial on Friday afternoon and does not rise again until dawn on Sunday, when the stone has already been removed. Why was this? Did the Church, as late as A.D. 58, know nothing of what happened during that critical period, or was St. Mark writing under the pressure of some intense reserve? The point is worth pondering because the same curious reluctance to deal with the physical cause of the movement of the stone comes out very strikingly in the parallel passages from St. Luke and St. John. St. Luke says: But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they [the women] came unto the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. St. Johns version is no less peculiar and arresting: The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, wile it was yet dark, unto the tomb, and seeth the stone taken away from the tomb. She runneth, therefore........ etc. In each case the women arrive to find the stone already rolled away, yet with no hint from the writers as to how this came about. It is only when we turn to St. Matthews Gospel that we read of a great angel descending and removing the stone. Now the peculiar and significant thing is this. We can search the apocryphal writings through and through, and we shall nowhere find even the remotest suggestion that the Lord Himself broke the barriers of His own prison. We are told that the stone rolled away of itself, or that supernatural beings descended and moved it. But nowhere is the obvious miracle recorded that Jesus Himself threw down the physical defences of the grave. Why did nobody ever say that the Lord Himself, of His own power and might, thrust aside the stone and achieved release from the cave? Why does every document which discusses this question assume that the stone was moved from without-either by an angel or by means of invisible power? I suggest that we are here in the presence of a deep and far-reaching historical fact-a fact which laid its compulsion upon everyone and diverted ultimately the very course of tradition. The moving of the stone was never ascribed to the power of the risen Lord Himself because there were men in Jerusalem who knew the real facts concerning what happened during those dark hours which preceded the dawn on Sunday. Those facts precluded the hypothesis being truthfully advanced, and for evidence of that we must turn yet again to that ancient and curiously archaic story of the guard. I have already given reason for believing that in the original and true version of this story the priests went to Pilate, late on Saturday afternoon or early evening, in the hope of arranging with him for the policing of the grave-a precausion very desirable in view of the unpredictable attitude of the populace when the restraint of the Sabbath observance was removed. Pilate refused their request, as St. Matthews version clearly shows, and the priests had no alternative but to fall back upon the Temple Guard for this necessary duty. Peace!
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 21:44:07 +0000
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